{"id":214321,"date":"2025-04-30T07:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T07:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-30-2025-ending-the-vietnam-war-miss-saigon\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T07:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T07:34:10","slug":"americanstudies-april-30-2025-ending-the-vietnam-war-miss-saigon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=214321","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 30, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-5033083920406521928\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p>[On <a href=\"https:\/\/diplomacy.state.gov\/stories\/fall-of-saigon-1975-american-diplomats-refugees\/\">April 30,<br \/>\n1975<\/a>, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in<br \/>\nSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That<br \/>\nconclusion has been represented frequently &amp; complicatedly in American<br \/>\nmedia, so this week for its 50<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a<br \/>\nhandful of such representations!]<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">On two<br \/>\nbravura sequences which reveal what a musical can do with history, and one<br \/>\ndefinite limitation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">I haven\u2019t<br \/>\nhad the chance to see a lot of musicals live (<i><a href=\"https:\/\/americanstudier.blogspot.com\/2016\/09\/september-15-2016-musicalstudying.html\">Rent<\/a><br \/>\n<\/i>is the most notable exception, and remains to this day one of my favorite<br \/>\nexperiences of live art in any genre\/medium), but I did see and enjoy <i><a href=\"https:\/\/playbill.com\/production\/miss-saigon-broadway-theatre-vault-0000012256\">Miss<br \/>\nSaigon <span style=\"font-style: normal;\">on Broadway<\/span><\/a><\/i> in the<br \/>\nmid-1990s. I can\u2019t say I have particularly specific memories of much of it<br \/>\nthese three decades down the road, but one moment definitely still stands out<br \/>\n(as it did at the time as well): the end of Act I, when an actual helicopter (or<br \/>\nwhat sure seemed like one to those of us in the audience) lands on stage at the<br \/>\nculmination of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pbIFBHTq0KM\">dream<br \/>\nsequence about the evacuation<\/a> from U.S. troops and personnel from South<br \/>\nVietnam in 1975. That was without doubt the most extreme and chaotic thing I\u2019ve<br \/>\nseen in a live performance, and I\u2019d say those tones were exactly right for a depiction<br \/>\nof what had to be a profoundly chaotic situation on the ground, for the evacuees<br \/>\nto be sure but even more so for all those being left behind (like the <a href=\"https:\/\/playbill.com\/article\/will-miss-saigon-still-be-fresh-for-broadways-kim-after-two-years-in-the-role\">musical\u2019s<br \/>\nheroine Kim<\/a>, in whose dream about the moment the audience is located). <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Nothing<br \/>\nelse in <i>Miss Saigon<\/i> was as striking as that helicopter moment, but the<br \/>\nsecond Act does feature its own bravura sequence, one depicting a victory<br \/>\nparade of North Vietnamese forces and leaders through the streets of Saigon (juxtaposed<br \/>\nwith significant and eventually tragic developments for the musical\u2019s South<br \/>\nVietnamese main characters, including Kim and her young son). I don\u2019t remember this<br \/>\nmoment as clearly by any means, but I do recall a very full stage with its own<br \/>\nchaotic cacophony of tones\u2014the celebratory mode of the parade, mixed feelings<br \/>\non behalf of its South Vietnamese audience overall, and an unfolding violent encounter<br \/>\nfor Kim and those close to her. And that too to my mind captures the multiple layers<br \/>\nof the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam and Vietnam as a whole, the varied<br \/>\nand contradictory emotions among different communities and even within<br \/>\nindividuals in such a place and time. Too much of our focus in the U.S. has<br \/>\nbeen on the war and its aftermath from our perspective (understandably, but<br \/>\nnonetheless), so there\u2019s a great deal to be said for the musical\u2019s extended<br \/>\nfocus on Vietnam after the evacuation and fall of Saigon. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">A number<br \/>\nof late 20<sup>th<\/sup> and early 21<sup>st<\/sup> century musicals have been<br \/>\nadaptations of earlier works (<i>Rent<\/i> is an update of Puccini\u2019s <i>La Boh\u00e9me<\/i>,<br \/>\nfor example), so it\u2019s not particularly surprising that <i>Miss Saigon<\/i> was<br \/>\ntoo, in this case an <a href=\"https:\/\/operawire.com\/opera-vs-broadway-the-constrasting-styles-of-madama-butterfly-its-revival-as-miss-saigon\/\">adaptation<br \/>\nof another Puccini opera<\/a>, <i>Madame Butterfly<\/i> (1904). But I would say<br \/>\nthat fact reveals a significant problem with <i>Miss Saigon<\/i>, and not just<br \/>\nthe obvious that Puccini\u2019s turn of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century vision of Asia<br \/>\n(through his titular Japanese heroine and the opera\u2019s settings alike) is quite<br \/>\noutdated at best and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfopera.com\/digital\/exhibit\/madame-butterfly\/butterfly-a-controversy\/\">Orientalist<br \/>\nat worst<\/a>. After all, even if it weren\u2019t, it\u2019s set in Japan around 1900, not<br \/>\nVietnam in 1975, and there\u2019s simply no way that an adaptation of a work about the<br \/>\nformer could ever be as specific to the histories of the latter as would be<br \/>\nideal for any work of <a href=\"https:\/\/americanstudier.blogspot.com\/2020\/07\/july-20-2020-historical-fictions.html\">historical<br \/>\nfiction<\/a>. I don\u2019t know that a central goal of <i>Miss Saigon <\/i>is doing<br \/>\ncomplex justice to those histories necessarily\u2014but given how much better we<br \/>\nstill need to remember the end and aftermath of the Vietnam War, I\u2019m glad for<br \/>\nthe ways this musical can help us do so, and frustrated by its storytelling<br \/>\nlimitations. <span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Next<br \/>\nportrayal tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Ben<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">PS. What<br \/>\ndo you think? Representations of the war you\u2019d highlight? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That conclusion has been represented frequently &amp; complicatedly in American media, so this week for its 50th anniversary I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a handful of such representations!] On two bravura sequences which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,4759,56744,4980,3739],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-214321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-april","tag-saigon","tag-vietnam","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>AmericanStudies: April 30, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=214321\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: April 30, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: Miss Saigon - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. 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